


anonymous

by CrazyPrepared (writerofberk)



Category: Trolls (Movies 2016 2020)
Genre: F/M, because i respectfully but passionately disagree with both, once again i am gleefully ignoring both the Netflix series and the sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26889892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerofberk/pseuds/CrazyPrepared
Summary: When Poppy was sixteen, she started getting anonymous love poems.When she is twenty-three, she finds them again.
Relationships: Branch/Queen Poppy (Trolls)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 71
Collections: Best Broppy, Broppy Fics, Top Shelf Broppy





	anonymous

The paper in Poppy's hand is white.

The paper in Poppy's hand is plain white—practical, sensible, no fuss, no frills, no bright colors or flashy patterns or shimmering glitter, not even a heart or a cupcake or a rainbow cut out and pasted in the corner—and Branch actually stops in her doorway to take a second look, to make sure it's not just a trick of the light, of the sun through her window.

Since when does Poppy use plain white paper? Hell, since when does _any other troll in the entire town_ use plain white paper? As far as Branch can tell, he's the only one—even all the printed books in the village are alive with rainbow colors, with scented stickers and yellow smiley-faces and bright pictures—but it looks like he's wrong, it looks like Poppy does use plain white paper, here and there, because it's in her hands, and it's scattered all around her on the floor like snow, like a second carpet. Her bright eyes flick over the page, and her small, soft pink lips open and move as she reads, as she whispers the words, under her breath, to herself, that thing she does where she reads out loud but she doesn't actually read out loud—

God. It's such a small and stupid thing to focus on. It's such a small, and stupid thing to love about her, but Branch loves that about her—like he loves the tiny curl at the end of her bubblegum pink ponytail, like he loves the little dimple deep in her left cheek, like he loves when she bumps into doors or tables or chairs and says _sorry_ and the way she wrinkles up her nose when she's irritated with him, because she still doesn't know how to scowl, and it's so goddamn _adorable_ —

"Branch!" Poppy tosses the (plain, white) paper back down to the floor with all the rest, bounces up, and rushes over to him, flinging her arms around his neck. "Oh, my gosh, you're back! I missed you so much!"

"You saw me an hour ago," Branch points out, and he tells himself he's only breathless because she knocked into him like a damn hurricane. "Can't have missed me that much."

"I always miss you when you're gone!" Poppy pulls back to smile at him, and her eyes crinkle up at the corners and her left-side dimple shows, and the he's-only-breathless-because-she-knocked-into-him-like-a-damn-hurricane theory is complete bullshit.

And he doesn't even _care_. He just smiles back.

"I got Harper set up in Smidge's pod," he tells her. "I'll keep an eye on her for the next few days, but I don't think that bump on the head was anything to worry about. She was already feeling better when I left, she was joking around with Biggie and Guy. Looks like she's in the clear."

"Oh!" Poppy perks up even _more_ if that's possible. "Gosh, that's great! I'm really glad she's okay. Thanks for taking care of her, Branch, you're a life-saver." She hugs him again, her breath warm on his collarbone, her nose deep in the hollow of his neck, and he has to actually remind himself to breathe.

"Uh," he says, very ineloquently, "no problem. Um." He clears his throat a little too loudly. "So, what's with all the—?" He pulls back to jerk his chin at the papers.

"Oh!" Poppy spins on her heel to look down at the stack on the floor, and Branch tries not to stare at the flare of her skirt around her long legs. "Just goin' down memory lane, you know?" She smiles, small and— _sad_ , almost, slightly wistful, a tinge of bitter mixed in with all the sweet. "It's been a long time since I went through all my stuff, and I just—I found—" she glances over her shoulder again at the heap of papers strewn all over her fuzzy carpet, and a red tinge edges steadily into her pink cheeks, "—I found old love letters."

Branch's stomach drops. " _Love letters_?" His mouth goes so dry, he can hardly push the words past his numb, frozen lips. But that's _ridiculous_ , because she's Poppy, and she's had strings of admirers at her heels as long as he can remember, because she's Poppy, she's—God, just look at her, of course she got love letters, and of course she still gets love letters, and she's probably gotten at least one love letter from every troll in the village at this point, because she's Poppy, so there is absolutely no need to freak out about this. Really, what are the odds, anyway? "Y-You—" he tries to swallow, but his throat is dry, too, and it sticks, "—you get plenty of those, though. Right?"

"I mean," Poppy bites her lip, and tucks a lock of bright hair behind one ear, "yeah, I guess I kinda _do_ , now that I think about it, but—" she kneels down to pick through the pile again, "—but there was this one troll—" she riffles and rustles through the stack for a minute before she finally plucks out a single paper, and reads it over before she looks back up at Branch. "They never signed their name. Weird, huh?"

Branch is at least ninety-seven percent certain his chest has just tied itself in a particularly complex knot, because why else would he feel like maybe a Bergen has made itself at home on his chest? "Weird?" he echoes, and even in his own ears, it sounds too high, too sharp, too fast, and that's ridiculous, because there is absolutely no need to freak out over this, there is absolutely no need to blow this up, to turn this into a big deal, because it could be _anyone_ , it could be _anyone in the entire village_ , remember, she's _Poppy_ , it's impossible to not fall a little bit in love with her, so there's no need to freak out, he doesn't need to freak out, _don't freak out, don't freak out, don't freak out, do not freak out._ "Is that weird? Are they the only troll who never—?"

"Never signed their name? Yeah!" Poppy glances back down at the paper clutched in her pink fist. "Yeah, that's the thing! What kind of troll would write anonymous love letters? It's so _weird_!"

Oh.

Oh, _no_.

The paper in Poppy's hand is white, and all the rest of the paper in the stack is white, and Poppy never uses white paper and no one in the entire town uses white paper, and Branch is the only troll in the town who uses white paper and _they never signed their name_ and can he freak out now, is he finally allowed to freak out now? _Please_?

"—really weird, though, they weren't actually 'letters', it was more like—" Poppy tips her pink head to the side, "—like _poetry_. You know?"

_Holy fucking shit._

This is _so bad_.

"Um," Branch says, and slides down to the floor.

"Oh, but it was always so _pretty_!" Poppy gushes, with the page crushed to her chest and a soft little smile on her face. "I mean, it was always so _sad_ , but it was always _so pretty_ , they were so good at it, like—hang on—" she drops the sheet into her lap again, and smooths out the wrinkles and creases with the flat of her hand. " _I know very well you'll never love me—only let me love you, let me live out my fate—to adore you, forever, from afar, let me burn for you until—"_

"Okay!" Branch says, except it's actually a kind of, well, a squeak, maybe, a little bit—he sounds much, much higher than he usually does—but he can _not_ let her say the rest of that. His cheeks are already burning with the little bit she _did_ get out. "Okay! That—that's enough. You shouldn't waste your time on this troll, Poppy. He never signed his name, and he's stopped writing to you. You'll never figure out who he is, so there's no point in talking about it."

Poppy frowns. She pushes her hair back again, and leans back a little. "Yeah," she says, with a heavy sigh. "Yeah, I guess you're right, I just—I just always _wondered_ —" she drops her chin in her own open pink palm, "—I guess I just _worried_ about them, you know?"

Branch definitely does _not_ know. "You don't even know who it _was_ ," he points out, as nicely as he can. "I mean, what if it turned out they were awful? What if it turned out they were someone you hate? What if it turned out he was—" he can't look at her, "—what if it turned out he was really _mean_? You shouldn't waste your time worrying about a troll like—"

"But they sounded _sad_!" Poppy bursts out. "They sounded so _lonely_ , Branch! All the time! Every letter! They sounded like they didn't have any friends, and they sounded like they didn't think _anyone_ loved them, and I just—!" She huffs out a heavy breath. "I just really wish I could have _helped_ them."

Branch swallows. He looks down at his own hands in his lap—at his scarred-up, sky-blue skin, that vivid, vibrant burst of color, so bright against all the dark brown and deep green of his clothes, the color he hadn't thought would stick, the color he had thought would dim right back down to grey in a matter of days, in a matter of hours, even—before he flicks a glance back up at her. "I'm sure," he says, quietly, his heart in his throat, "that you did."

"I just—" she sits up again, with a little shake of her head, "—I just don't get why they wouldn't _tell me_. What kind of troll does that? What kind of troll goes to all this trouble, writes all these letters, all this poetry, says all this sweet stuff about me, and then doesn't even sign their—!"

Poppy stops dead. Right there in the middle of her sentence, with her lips still open, and her eyes blown wide, she grinds to a full halt—like she's frozen, like she's turned to stone, but it's not her _I'm making_ _a_ _mental scrapbook complete with glitter and stickers_ face, and it's not her _I'm planning a party complete with colored lights and full playlists face_ , either, because she hasn't got a smile on her face or a sparkle in her eyes, it's almost like a blank, dazed kind of shock—

" _Branch_ ," she says, sudden and sharp, and she snaps around to look at him, her bright eyes narrowed in her pretty, freckled face. "How do _you_ know they stopped writing to me?"

"What?" Branch says, out loud, because it takes a solid two-point-five seconds to hit him, and it takes him an additional two-point-five seconds to think, _oh, shit, this is it, isn't it, this is it, I'm fucked, I'm absolutely fucked_. "Y-You told me. You were—you were talking about it in the past tense, you were all 'they sounded sad', and you said—you said you were 'going down memory lane', or—or something—"

"You said 'he'," Poppy cuts in, her voice like ice, cold and clear. "You said ' _he_ never signed his name'. You said 'what if _he_ was really mean'."

Can he freak out _now_? "I-I guessed," he says, but even he can hear the stammer in his voice, and raw panic claws its way up the back of his throat with long, sharp nails, "I guessed, Poppy, that's all, it was just a _guess_ , I-I don't know any more about this troll than _you_ do, I was just—"

" _You_ came up with that poem," Poppy cuts him off again, but there's a—a twitch, almost, at the edge of her lip, like she wants to smile, but she won't let herself, and what the hell can she possibly find to be _happy_ about? "In the skating rink. With Bridget and Gristle."

"B-Because the rest of you weren't coming up with _anything_!" But it's not enough, and he _knows_ it's not enough, he's lost, and he knows he's lost, even as he says it, he knows he's lost. "I was talking off the top of my head, Poppy, I was tr-trying not to get us all _eaten_ , I-I don't even remember what I—"

"'Your eyes'—" Poppy whispers, almost to herself, "—'like two pools so deep'—"

"No," Branch says, but it's over, it's all over, he's lost, he's _fucked_ , because _she knows_ , and she's not—she's not supposed to—she was _never supposed to know_ — "no, that's—that's not—I _wasn't_ —"

Poppy snatches up another paper off the top of the stack with a loud crinkle, and her mouth finally pulls up all the way, and a full smile blooms over her face, and it's like the sun, bright and warm and _beautiful_ , and what the hell is she so happy about? Isn't she upset? Isn't she mad? Doesn't she know this is a _bad_ thing?

" _Do you think,_ " she reads off, and every word comes out slow and steady and deliberate, " _that your bright colors could bleed through my shades of grey?_ "

Teenage Branch really should have tried to be a little bit subtler.

The knot in his chest finally pulls tight enough to break, but he still can't breathe right around the pieces. This wasn't supposed to happen. This was never supposed to happen. _She was never supposed to know_ , and all his—all his lies, all the times he held himself back, all the times he bit his tongue so he wouldn't say, _God, I love you_ , it all meant nothing, it was all for nothing, because _she found out anyway_ , and she _knows_ , and—

Poppy lifts her head, and she looks up at him, all wide eyes and flushed cheeks and sunshine smile. "Oh, my gosh," she says, in a whisper, in a soft and shaky and almost _ecstatic_ breath, and she leans in so close, he can count every single silver freckle on her cheek, every single bubblegum-pink hair on her forehead, "oh, my gosh, it's really _you_."

Branch is, admittedly, a little bit lost. She doesn't look upset. She doesn't look mad. She looks _happy_ , and is there something to be happy about, is _this_ something to be happy about, is this—? Is she happy about—? It hurts to hope, because he knows he's wrong, he knows he's made a mistake, he just knows there's a fatal dot he didn't connect, he just knows he's wrong about this, he just knows he shouldn't hope, but it's like he _can't stop_ , and what if she's happy about this, what if she's really, actually happy that it's—that it's _him_ —?

Poppy tips her head up, and she kisses him.

_Oh._

Oh, she—her mouth, and she presses into him, warm and firm and _steady_ , in a way he's never felt, in a way he's never been, and—and she tastes like her favorite strawberry lip gloss, and her hands—on his chest, on his cheek, tangled in his hair, and she kisses him, over and over and over again—

"You're—?" Branch murmurs, breathless, half into her open mouth, and he pulls back, even if it's the very last thing in the world he wants to do, because he has to—he has to _be sure_ , he doesn't want to do this if she's not—if she doesn't— "You're—" he looks, almost desperately, for the unease or uncertainty or hesitance or—or revulsion, he looks for it, behind her eyes, but he— _he doesn't see_ —"—you're— _okay_? With this? With You're okay with—" he bites down, too hard, on his bottom lip, and he can feel the skin break, "—with me? You're—you're _happy_ —?"

Poppy laughs, and it's not her normal laugh—her normal laugh is bright and bubbly and loud, her normal laugh makes every troll around her turn to look—this laugh is too soft for that, but he thinks he might like this laugh even more. "I am," she says, and she sounds a little breathless, too, " _completely_ _happy_ with you."

And she kisses him again—warm and firm and steady and strawberry lip gloss and her hands on his chest on his cheek in his hair—and now he kisses back, his body tangled up with hers in a plain-white-paper pile of years-old letters, and he is completely _happy_.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me casually strolling back into the fandom two years too late with Branch/Poppy schmaltz and Starbucks


End file.
